Ask school-aged kids in a dis­ad­van­taged place what they want to be and the answer is almost invari­ably a vari­a­tion of doc­tor or nurse or teacher. Their val­ues and ambi­tions are skewed to serv­ing the greater good.

I’ve yet to hear one say “influ­encer”, or “star”, or even “rich” come to that.
The peo­ple who help them, their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties, at ground lev­el, are the ones they hope to emulate.
The high and the mighty rarely fea­ture, almost invari­ably because they either don’t see it as worth­while, or have no under­stand­ing that it exists as an option, nev­er mind an admirable aspi­ra­tion in and of itself.
Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump claimed cred­it  – not whol­ly with­out mer­it – for a promis­ing peace deal for what he called “one of the worst wars anyone’s ever seen” in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go (DRC).
But just in case any­one missed what a big deal he may actu­al­ly pull off (if — big if — he has the sta­mi­na and inter­est to keep it on course),  he added: And not only that, we’re get­ting for the Unit­ed States a lot of the min­er­al rights from Congo.”
Appar­ent­ly the val­ue scale for peace is eco­nom­ics based.
Or am I being unfair and that’s just the Trumpian ver­sion of Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roosevelt’s obser­va­tion: “The test of progress is not whether we add more to the abun­dance of those who have much; it is whether we pro­vide enough for those who have too little.”
Per­haps (unlike­ly as it may seem) that’s what Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Rubio had in mind when he not­ed that the DRC peace deal was “…about allow­ing peo­ple to now have dreams and hopes for a bet­ter life, for pros­per­i­ty, for eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty, for fam­i­ly reuni­fi­ca­tion – for all of the things that make life worth living.”
The skew is that it didn’t seem to occur to Rubio that he was also sum­ming up the dreams of migrants, Gaza civil­ians and the mil­lions who will suf­fer and die thanks to the clos­ing down of USAID.

      THE SICKENING NO LONGER SHOCKS

The UK’s now 50 year-old Glas­ton­bury Music Fes­ti­val ‘s rep­u­ta­tion as the best in the world is due in no small mea­sure to  its “inti­mate sense of com­mu­ni­ty and prin­ci­ples of tol­er­ance and acceptance.””
It was marred this year by the lead singer of a duo call­ing them­selves “Bob Vylan” strut­ting across a stage, screech­ing “Death, death to the IDF”, the acronym of the Israeli Defence Forces.
Hav­ing seen them in action on numer­ous occa­sions, I hold lit­tle admi­ra­tion for the Israeli military.
But it seems to me if you think that kind of chant, at a music fes­ti­val, is a prop­er or clever form of protest, your stan­dards and think­ing are mis-skewed to the extreme. It would be bad enough if it was just part of the act. But a vast sec­tion of the audi­ence joined in. Whether that was out of con­vic­tion, or mere­ly because it’s what you do in a crowd to fit in, will nev­er be clear.
As the writer Howard Jacob­sen not­ed with regret: “This ver­sion of une­d­u­cat­ed, unthink­ing, received unwis­dom, has been nor­malised to the point of being commonplace.”

                           GREED VS GUMPTION

CBS’ chief share­hold­er Shari Red­stone pre­ferred Mam­mon over moral­i­ty, chose to align with a lout over lega­cy, when she fold­ed in the face of the bul­ly­ing bluster of Trump by set­tling a law­suit uni­ver­sal­ly described as one that could and should have been won by her side.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team called it “..anoth­er win for the Amer­i­can peo­ple as he (Trump), once again, holds the Fake News media account­able for their wrong­do­ing and deceit,”
FOX News couldn’t have skewed it bet­ter, and they’re the undis­put­ed masters.
But there’s a chal­lenger com­ing up on the outside.
CBS CEO George Cheeks report­ed­ly said the set­tle­ment “…offers a nego­ti­at­ed res­o­lu­tion that allows com­pa­nies to focus on their core objec­tives, rather than being mired in uncer­tain­ty and distraction.”
For all of the 36 years I worked for CBS, I thought its “core objec­tives” were dili­gent, truth­ful report­ing of the news while adher­ing to CBS’ rigid stan­dards and rich heritage.
So whose val­ues are wrong­ly skewed?
The polit­i­cal rulers who mea­sure peace with economics?
Those who will­ing­ly chant hate­ful slo­gans out of igno­rance or a desire to fit in ?
The pow­ers that now own and run CBS?
Or mine and those of every col­league I had the priv­i­lege to work with, and (with rare and thank­ful­ly brief excep­tion) boss­es at CBS News?
If the answer isn’t obvi­ous, then I hope none of those kids in des­per­ate­ly needy places look this way for guid­ance on which way to skew their values.

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